Ryan's Hope

by Benjamin J. Kirby

Well, no doubt you've already heard the political news of the day, and there's not much else I can say about it you can't find on your own.  My recommended post is from Kevin Murphy at a revitalized, resurgent Ghost in the Machine, which I'm happy to see.

I'm in agreement with my progressive colleagues as well as the emerging narrative from the mainstream media that the selection of the House Budget Chairman, Congressman Paul Ryan, is just about the most regressive choice Romney could've made (save for, say, Michele Bachmann, maybe).  The choice of Paul Ryan is a desperate pander to a lukewarm GOP base Romney desperately needs fired up for November.

I'll admit to being a Marco Rubio dead-ender, just figuring Romney needed the credentials of the conservative, tea partier favorite -- not to mention a Hispanic man in a state Romney desperately needs to win.  I thought I tweeted it, or re-tweeted something about that, but I guess I wasn't smart enough to have done it, because going back through the archive of tweets, I see nothing.

Anyway, now the Miami Herald has gone ahead and published Marc Caputo's story today on how not only Mitt blew it here in Florida by not choosing Rubio, but how Mister Privatize Medicare may well be a drag on Team Mittens here in Florida.  

And as my friend Kevin King noted on his Facebook page, the math for Romney without Florida ain't pretty:

Playing with electoral map on www.270towin.com. If Paul Ryan's Medicare plan sinks Romney in Florida, there's almost no path to victory. Romney could win Ohio, Virginia, North Carolina, Wisconsin, Iowa, and Colorado and would still lose if he lost Florida. 

This is all true.

As Floridians especially get to know Congressman Ryan -- the architect of the privatization of Medicare scheme -- I suspect the less they'll like him.

One last thought on Ryan: I know that this election will have little -- virtually nothing -- to do with international affairs, barring some seismic global geopolitical shift, but this VP selection cedes foreign affairs entirely to the incumbent president.

Once again, the Romney campaign appears to be in a box.  This time, it is one in which they placed themselves.

Comments

[KcM]

Thanks much for the kind link. Regarding a previous conversation, I followed the instructions here -- http://www.analogousmember.com/archives/516 -- to go from Movable Type to Wordpress. It took me about a day to make sure the numbers squared up on the old posts, but all in all, it was relatively painless.

I guess you'd probably want to start here: http://www.bootstrap-analysis.com/escape-from-typepad -- although it looks a little more complicated venturing over from Typepad.